Dust
by freudian fuckup
Summary: Two young men and one old cinema.


The sidewalk sparkles with broken glass and rainwater, both of which Remus does his best to negotiate. Sirius crunches and splashes his way along with more enthusiasm than the situation necessitates. The meeting went well, all things considered, but the heavy sense of foreboding is kept at bay by Sirius's power of will alone. They're passing a boarded up cinema when Remus gets a funny look on his face that Sirius is certain means he's going to vomit or say something terribly important. He's been behaving strangely all day, and not in any of the ways that he is normally strange, which usually involve books and an unseemly affection for tea. In either case, Sirius stops walking so abruptly that Remus takes a few steps before realizing he is the only one moving.

"What are you doing?" Remus says, one eye peering from beneath a mop of overlong school boy hair. Haircuts: the first casualty of war.

"Waiting on you to grow some bollocks and spit it out."

"Spit _what _out? You aren't psychic, you know. No matter how many times you predicted the color of girls' knickers in school."

"If I were psychic, I wouldn't bother asking you to tell me what's making you make that dreadful face, you arse. I'd just know."

"My face is not _dreadful_, thank you. It's—"

"The stuff of legend, fruit of the loins of Aphrodite herself, yes yes yes, now out with it."

"Yes well…" Remus mutters, shuffling the remnants of the theater's mosaic entryway with loafer-clad feet. He looks pained. It's a little endearing, but mostly it makes Sirius nervous about whatever he is about to say. "Lily has erm— that is to say… Lily thinks she might be, you know, going to have a umm… baby."

Sirius reacts in several ways simultaneously: his eyes grow to a size found only in mediwitch texts, his jaw parts company with the rest of his face, and the whole of his left leg declares its independence from the rest of his body and tries to go off on its own. With a sort of graceless half-wobble, he reigns in the rogue leg and begins to pace so quickly he appears to be running in circles.

"Padfoot, calm down—"

"Holy blessed buggering fuck! Don't tell me to calm down, I—Why hasn't Prongs told me?"

At that, Remus makes a valiant effort at crawling into the Earth and disappearing, but is somewhat less successful than one might hope.

"He, well, he might not _know_, so to speak…"

"_So to speak_?? 'He might not know,' what is that, some groovy new expression the kids are using? You'd best tell me what language you're speaking Moony, because in English, what you just said means that my best friend is going to have a… a _kid_ or something."

"Or something? Like what, a kangaroo?"

Sirius tries his best to glare murderously, but it comes off a bit too gob-smacked to be wholly effective.

"Look, I know this is a bit of a shock—"

"A bit! 'A bit' of a shock, Moony, is discovering Snivellus has managed to find someone willing to take his precious flower—_this_, this is like… like… I don't know what it is like because it is just that absurdly absurd!"

"Yes, well… The point is, you can't tell James, or he'll kill me for not telling him. Or Lily, oh gods! You mustn't tell Lily, Padfoot, she'll kill me for telling and you for knowing and possibly the whole of England for not putting a stop to me and my ridiculous mouth!"

"I've half a mind to floo right over there and—"

"Think of the violence, Padfoot! Think of the horrible, gory atrocities that will be left in her wake! Think of the children!"

"What children?"

"I don't know, any children! So long as they distract you from getting anywhere near Lily Potter!"

Sirius squints and rubs the bridge of his nose, as though he might wake up.

"Oh bleeding Christ." And he sits down in the decaying entryway.

Remus gingerly arranges himself beside Sirius, trying to strike a balance between a comforting closeness and enough room to avoid the odd punch. "It was bound to happen sooner or later," Remus says.

"No! I mean, yeah, I know _that_. The way those two are—all naked and touching—I don't think James remembers how to wear underpants anymore. But, but it's _scary_ Moony, in'nit? We're _old_!"

Remus smiles. "We aren't any older than we were a minute ago."

"We are! Well, maybe not _you_. You've always been about forty—and I'm being kind there, because any older and what we're doing would just be perverted—_more_ perverted."

"Smashing, now I'm Mrs. Robinson," Remus mutters.

"Tha's not, just, just shut up a moment, yeah? It's not just the damn... _kid_," Sirius says, as though it were a horrible swear word. "It's everything, all of it, you know? We're twenty, Remus! Twenty! Me, and James, and Lily, and Peter, and you, no matter how many wooly cardigans you wear or how many cups of tea you drink, are twenty. Doesn't it bother you sometimes? What we're doing? We should be fucking around, Moony!"

"Well, I think we should get back to the flat first if you want to—"

"Not _that_ kind of—I mean, that kind too, of course—I mean _with our Lives_. We're meant to be spending money we don't have, and going backpacking across Asia, and quitting our jobs because we want to spend more time learning to juggle!"

"I would never—"

"Well, of course _you_ wouldn't," Sirius sighs, exasperatedly. "But _I_ would. And I, I just. I want to be a stupid kid, Remus. Not some bloody foot soldier."

Remus looks for a moment very confused. Then he frowns, making little worry lines across his forehead and at the corners of his eyes. Sirius has just worked himself up to stand when Remus says, a little too loudly, "Alright, let's do something stupid then."

And as Sirius turns to ask what in the hell he's on about, Remus does one of those things that makes Sirius remember why he is completely and embarrassingly infatuated: Remus kisses him. On the skin where his jaw and his ear meet. Hard.

"What are you—" Sirius says, sounding startled and utterly delighted.

Remus looks down at him, his eyes alight with the glow of Mischief, a rare sight that makes Sirius's stomach flip-flop.

"Come on, then," Remus says, and he grabs Sirius's whole arm.

The door to the theater falls half off the hinges and a rush stale air hits Sirius's nostrils with all the subtlety of a bat-bogey hex. The dust is so thick he can taste it, dull and bitter, sticking to his tonsils and coating his lungs. But Remus has him by the hand, and they're stumbling blind into the dark lobby.

"This is illegal!" Sirius says in shock.

"Since when has that ever—"

"No! It doesn't matter to me, but you! You are Remus Lupin, law abiding citizen and creature of the night. And this is so, _so_ illegal."

Remus stops. He looks back at Sirius, who he had been dragging along. "Be quiet now," he says firmly.

Sirius nods.

The lobby is wide and shallow, and to their right an open archway reveals what appears to be the oldest cinema in existence. All around them bits of plaster lay scattered haphazardly across the geometric pattern of the carpet. The dim light emanating from the tip of Remus's wand reflects off the domed ceiling where a scattered array of stars have been painted to resemble the sky around this time of year. Sirius thinks immediately of the Great Hall, but these stars are stylized, bigger than is reasonable.

Remus sighs into the crook of Sirius's neck before biting down.

"Oh. Oh!" Sirius whispers.

"Yes, 'Oh'," Remus says, and shoves Sirius against the nearest wall. Even the air feels dirty, and Sirius is half-sure Remus is going to squeal at any moment and start frantically dusting himself off. Instead, Remus takes off his shirt. Then he takes off Sirius's shirt. Sirius, for his part, stands there, grinning like an idiot.

"D'ya know something?" Sirius says.

"I know many things, Padfoot, but I really don't feel like discussing them right now."

"I love you, you stuffy, shiftlifting prat," Sirius rumbles.

Remus stops dead and leans back a little, so they are staring, eye-to-eye. "Well. Good. Because you are absolutely insane, and sometimes I think you might be the most ridiculous person I've ever been around, and when you get nervous you are so damned irritating that I want to box your ears off your stupid head, but, despite all that, I still, for no apparent reason, love you. So it's good to, you know, know that I'm not alone in my madness."

Sirius blinks. He puts his hands on either side of Remus's face and smiles again. "Not alone. Never that." He kisses Remus, and kisses him again and again, until kisses bleed together and fingers find hair and hips and buttons. Remus makes a little growling, moaning sound, like frustration and want. The theater around them seems to groan and creak, an old and lovely thing roused from slumber, a reanimated corpse. The wall they have fallen against is made of thick, soft dust that clings to their hair and Remus's back where he is pressed against it. Sirius puts a hand against the wall for balance, and when he moves it, he's startled to see his face reflected in the clean, palm-shaped place. The more they move, the more they are visible in the mirror, with each touch, every thrust and slide revealing their silent doubles.

With long, strong fingers, Remus flicks open the buttons on Sirius's trousers, while sharp teeth clasp and tug at the flesh over Sirius's (pounding, pulsing) heart. Sirius's hands grasp at shoulders as Remus slides to the floor, taking Sirius's undone trousers with him. Without hesitation, a solid, wet heat engulfs him, and Sirius places his head delicately against the cool mirror, and looks down.

On his knees, Remus Lupin is not a skinny, scarred nineteen-year-old. He's not a werewolf or a soldier or a sneaky son of a bitch. He is all these things, but still, he is more. He is the reason that Sirius believes, truly and horribly, that they are meant for more than war. He is the faint echo of a life beyond the daily darkness they stare into, and he is the light at the bottom of the bottomless pit that Sirius finds him self facing more and more. And Remus Lupin is, undeniably, the greatest thing to have ever happened to a delinquent, disinherited aristocrat, regardless of the terrifying feeling of futility that loving him evokes. Sirius always thought love would feel like the home he never had, like safe harbor in the storm that rises and rumbles around them. But it's so very different. It's a state of constant frustration, loving someone so absolutely and so dangerously, but being unable to do anything about it except touch them and whisper it to them while they sleep.

As he stares at Remus, and as he feels the wonderful, surprising things Remus is doing to him, Sirius wonders if anyone has ever had it better than they do now: in a dirty theater, half-dressed, half-crazed, with nothing but dust and sweat between them.

A groan flies from Sirius's mouth, involuntarily, and Remus pulls away, leans back against the mirror. His eyes flash fire and his mouth twists into a smile and a smirk, giving him a predatory look. Sirius pulls him upright by the nape of his neck. Before their mouths can reconnect, Sirius, with his Auror hands like lightning, has Remus's trousers around his ankles, and they are pressed together _just so_ and hips hit hips and hot skin presses and they sigh and slide and _just, _just_ there_.

Remus comes, murmuring Sirius's name against the crook of his neck, and Sirius finishes in complete silence, shaking and choking on air, because all the words he could ever think to say are useless against the neuron fire and helpless affection that this evokes. The still, stagnant air clings to them, and they lock their bodies together in every possible way, and pray that the dust might encapsulate them too, like this, whole.


End file.
